Silent Hell
by Bimo
Summary: Giles tries to cope with the traumatic events of "Becoming Pt II"


Author's note: Thanks to Pestilential Goddess for being so kind to  
volunteer as a beta :-)  
  
  
SILENT HELL  
by Bimo  
  
  
The splinters had been removed two days ago, but nevertheless, Giles'  
fingers still felt oddly stiff, weaker than usual. Stretching them up and  
down carefully, he was half-terrified and half-amazed by the incredible ease  
with which Angelus had broken them. Just like dry branches in autumn.  
  
He swallowed, tried to re-concentrate on the copy of an ancient Egyptian  
spell in lying front of him on the table. It was a humble attempt to do at  
least something for Buffy. She was out there all on her own. Without her  
Watcher to guide her and her friends to support her, the slayer would need  
all the assistance and protection she could get. Even if it only consisted  
in the conjuring of blessing spirits to guard her path wherever she went.  
  
Giles sucked the dry library air into his lungs, inhaled the unique smell of  
old paper and leather. Familiar, real, soothing. Exhausted, he continued to  
read until his vision blurred and words and lines in front of his eyes  
melted into a viscous, unintelligible mush of black spots and dancing  
letters. Finally he stopped, took his glasses off and started to polish them  
with a handkerchief from his pocket. He had never realized how often he  
actually did that, till Buffy had once pointed it out to him.  
  
Still the elegant metal frame of the new glasses felt a bit unfamiliar,  
since it was much lighter than the old one. Well, it also had been twice as  
expensive. An unnecessary luxury as Xander had found his old ones lying on  
the floor of Angelus' mansion. Just slightly damaged, but otherwise  
completely intact, almost a small miracle.  
  
According to the optician it would have been easy to fix them, such a small  
job that he didn't even want Giles to pay for the repair. The poor man  
probably still wondered, why, out of a sudden urge, Giles had so vehemently  
insisted on buying a new pair. One that had absolutely nothing in common  
with his old.  
  
How could he have possibly explained the reasons? The fact that he couldn't  
even look into a mirror wearing these dammed glasses on his nose, without  
also seeing Angelus. Angelus who beaten them right out of his face and given  
them back to him. Just as he pleased. Knowing that in the twilight of the  
room Giles would be practically blind without them, unable to recognize any  
more than just a few vague shadows. A small but effective trick to intensify  
his fear and helplessness.  
  
Some of Angelus' blows had been so hard that Giles believed they had smashed  
his eardrum. Of course they hadn't. Buffy's faithful watcher was too  
precious a toy to be destroyed that fast. Angelus knew it. Giles knew it.  
And this was exactly where the true insidiousness of these actions lay.  
  
His hands still trembled when he remembered those hours, bound to a chair,  
the fibers of his body numb and aching until Angelus had found a new way to  
make them explode in a concert of glowing pain. The vampire had told him the  
truth when he had said he knew how break people. That it was something,  
which had be done with care. Slowly, step for step. First the body, then the  
mind.  
  
Even now, weeks after the actual events, Giles was still fighting the  
after-effects. Anxiety, spontaneous attacks of panic, nightmares, insomnia.  
Almost the whole range of the classical symptoms he once had learned, since  
basic psychological knowledge had been part of his Watcher training. It just  
felt so utterly strange to diagnose them on himself and not on a newly  
called Slayer after the killing of her first vampire or on the poor, abused  
victim of some obscure demonic cult. Watchers were not allowed to possess  
any weaknesses, were supposed to lead the Slayer from a safe distance. And  
what had he done? Letting himself get captured and tortured. Had given away  
the Acathla's secret for an insane delusion, one single moment with his  
beloved Jenny. *Drusilla*  
  
His lips curled in a faint smile, bitter and cold as the cup of untouched  
tea, standing in front of him on his desk. How ironic, that the crucial idea  
had, of all people, come from Spike. Spike, the great, inscrutable mystery  
of this night's events. At the end he had been in the room for most of the  
time, cynically commenting on Angelus' actions, watching over him.  
Intervening whenever he had come to close to inflicting any kind of  
permanent damage like the chainsaw, or the moments when Angelus had mused  
about not only crushing the bones of Giles' fingers but also those of his  
spine.  
  
But maybe Spike was just the more profound sadist. The one who had  
instinctively understood how to make use of Drusilla's supernatural powers,  
since the true cruelty of what Drusilla had done to him did not reveal in  
daylight. Only at night, when in the daze between awareness and dream there  
wasn't any room left for rational thought.  
  
The hours between midnight and half past four in the morning were the time  
of the subconscious The time when he was the one who should have guessed  
Angelus' plans right from the start. When he was merely a selfish idiot, who  
had been fooled by Drusilla's deceit, not because he did not have any other  
choice but because he had *wanted* it.  
  
How terribly easy it had been to succumb to her whisper, to see not her, but  
Jenny. Alive, mysterious and vibrating with radiant beauty. His saving  
angel. She had bent down to him, smiled at him. Promised that everything  
would be fine. That they would finally be together and would share all the  
things they never got to have. How often he had longed to be with her, just  
for one more time, to feel her closeness, the soft, warm touch of her skin.  
  
By god, how he had wanted to believe in that illusion. For a few precious  
moments there had been no pain, no fear, just the two of them. His shock as  
the veil of magic lifted had been all the more devastating. He, the  
experienced Watcher, had willingly given away the key to the world's  
destruction and only the unbelievable courage of a bunch of kids had saved  
it. Giles did not even dare to imagine what would have happened without  
them.  
  
Once he gave in to the black whirlpool of "what ifs" and "could have beens",  
his path would lead straight into the rubber room. He knew that because he  
already had come to close to this point during all the countless nights when  
he had been lying on his couch, rocking back and forth. His mind spinning  
around Angelus and Drusilla. Frantic and desperate like a hamster in a  
running wheel.  
  
It was not until recently that these acute attacks of panic had finally  
begun to cease. Three of four times he had even managed to sleep though.  
Maybe just a couple of nights and he would be able to muster enough courage  
to sleep in his bed, even though the bedroom was still filled with the  
stirred up memories of Jenny. Sometimes, when he went up the stairs too  
unprepared, he could see her corpse, carefully displayed between the pillows  
like a precious gift. An image that would possibly keep haunting him  
forever. But he would have to learn to live with it. For Buffy, for the  
children. Somehow.  
  
  



End file.
